The US is making threatening noises towards Iran, but, says Ian Black, any military action would have dire consequences

The Guardian - 16 Feb 2005 - No one knows whether the US is serious about attacking Iran to destroy its alleged nuclear weapons programmes, and today's assertion from Tehran that US spy planes have been overflying the country will have done nothing to calm the jitters.
But everyone is perfectly clear that if that should happen, it will be a very big deal indeed - and one which might make the invasion of Iraq look like quite a minor incident.

It takes two to create a sense of crisis, and George Bush deliberately used his state of the union address on February 2 to depict Iran as "the world's primary state sponsor of terror", as well as accusing it of secretly developing an atomic arsenal.

In Washington's eyes, one of the central members of the "axis of evil" of 2002 has now graduated to become an "outpost of tyranny".

Lest anyone imagined that Iran would take such charges lying down, tens of thousands of people braved snowstorms a few days later to turn out in central Tehran to mark the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, and to hear a stern warning from President Mohammed Khatami that anyone who dared attack his country would face a "burning hell".

Decades of mutual animosity means that is no empty threat. For some, memories go back to the CIA's overthrow of the nationalist prime minister Mossadegh in 1953, and while many Iranians admire the US, it is still known, as Ayatollah Khomeini famously dubbed it, as the "Great Satan".

<>Americans remember the 444-day hostage drama at their embassy in Tehran. Nor have Iranians forgotten US support for Khomeini's bitter foe Saddam Hussein during the eight bloody years of war with Iraq.

Israel, physically far closer to Iran - and equipped with its own undeclared nuclear arsenal - is banging the drum even louder.
Its foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, warned on a visit to London on Wednesday that Iran, supporter of groups like Lebanon's Hizbullah and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, was now only six months away from acquiring the knowledge to join the nuclear club.

"This kind of extreme regime with a nuclear bomb is a nightmare, not only for us," he said.

So far, so bad. And if the rhetoric is to be believed, things may be about to get worse.

For the moment the US is grudgingly acquiescing in diplomatic efforts by the EU3 - Britain, France and Germany - to persuade Iran to permanently abandon its programme of enriching uranium, which can be used to make bomb-grade material. So far, this has only been suspended "temporarily", with more talks due next month.

That was the conciliatory-sounding message conveyed by Condoleezza Rice, the new US secretary of state, on her maiden visit to Europe, though she left no doubt about basic US hostility, criticising "the loathed" Tehran regime of "unelected mullahs" and urging "those of us who happen to be on the right side of freedom's divide" to encourage Iranians to win democracy.

Whether this amounted to a call for regime change, as seen in Baghdad, was tantalisingly unclear.

President Bush will be closely monitored on this subject when he arrives for his first second-term visit to the old continent next week - taking in Brussels, the German city of Mainz, and the Slovak capital Bratislava.

Europeans are increasingly worried that options are being closed off, with the distinct possibility that the issue will end up being referred, as the Americans would like, to the UN security council - the beginning of a path that could lead to sanctions, and, in the worst case, military action.

"Iran is not Saddam Hussein," he argued. "We have there a contradictory mixture of very dark elements and democratic elements."

International divisions, however, mean sanctions are unlikely, as Russia and China, permanent members of the security council, would be loath to agree.

Alarmingly, there are signs that military options are being explored by the US, with reports of unmanned drones, special forces identifying targets (Seymour Hersh's recent New Yorker article on this was reprinted in its entirety in the Iran News), as well as carefully-publicised nods, winks and briefings that Israel might attack Iran's nuclear sites, as it did Iraq's in 1981.

None of this, however, is entirely convincing. With US forces bogged down in Iraq and hunting al-Qaida and Taliban remnants in Afghanistan, it requires a huge leap of the imagination to see the 82nd airborne heading for Tehran and Qom.

Thus the dismissive comment by Ali Yunesi, Iran's powerful intelligence minister, that the very idea of US military action was "psychological warfare".

"The Americans," he insisted, "would not dare to implement their threats."

Still, Iran is playing hardball, robustly defending its right to develop civilian nuclear energy under the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and denying - though unconvincingly in the light of well-documented concealment and evasion in the past - that it has any plans to produce weapons.

Its motivation may well be the same search for national prestige and modernity that drove the shah - then backed by the US - to build the country's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr, on the Gulf, back in 1974. But it is no secret that the military option is an attractive one.

Experts warn of the danger of miscalculation and error as Iran, cut off from the international community in so many ways since the revolution, does not have a sophisticated nuclear or strategic community.

Shahram Chubin, a veteran observer of Iranian nuclear policy, argues that Tehran simply does not understand the complex doctrines of deterrence developed and refined between east and west during the cold war.

Clearly, an Iranian nuclear capability would not pose a threat to overwhelming US nuclear dominance, but it might force it to keep large forces in the region. It could also encourage other countries - Saudi Arabia and perhaps Egypt - to go down the nuclear path. That would leave the non-proliferation treaty in tatters.

Ironically, this crisis is deepening just as Iraq's elections ended in clear victory for the Shia Muslim groups which were supported by Iran during Ba'athist days. US officials have been quizzing them about their current relationship with Tehran, and especially about the implications of a confrontation over Iranian nuclear weapons.

Iraq's painful and violent march towards democracy, for all its shortcomings, holds some discomforting lessons for the Iranian regime, dominated by conservatives and clerics whose record on human rights is regularly lambasted.

It is hard for them to say so publicly, but some frustrated Iranian reformists - who lost their majority in the majlis last year - agree with Joschka Fischer that a hardline US approach, combined with Israeli sabre-rattling, will strengthen the hardliners and divert attention from their failure to tackle a stagnating economy and high unemployment.

Part of this riveting and volatile story is that American credibility is in very short supply - at home as well as abroad. Is the Bush administration, many wonder, likely to be more right about Iran than it was about Iraq?

"There is an eerie similarity to the events preceding the Iraq war," commented David Kay, who led the search for banned weapons of mass destruction in postwar Iraq, in a Washington Post article.

"Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran would be a grave danger to the world. That is not what is in doubt. What is in doubt is the ability of the US government to honestly assess Iran's nuclear status and to craft a set of measures that will cope with that threat short of military action by the United States or Israel."

The U.S. cannot sustain troop levels at current losses and levels in Iraq... Will they march on to Iran? That would be fool-hearty. D.R.A.F.T. might come into play? Civilian riots in America??? I see where this is leading...

Iran is a far more united nation than Iraq. They all back the students there and will march in the streets, risking their lives side by side with the students, should they choose to demonstrate their displeasure with an upcoming American occupation.

The Americans think the Iraqi's are tough, wait until they face the Iranians.

It also smacks of a bit of bullshit as an Iranian husband of mine explained how the American generals were down in the Iranian turrets when America was also funding Saddam. Makes global politics all appear a bit WWF to me. WTF mate?

I liken global politics to a poker table. Every player/nation that ruffles up its feathers and is prepared to go to war against humanity, send her citizens to their death, gets a stake at the claim - global monopolisation of all utilities and ulitimately, the land comprising many nations. This is the reward for selling out your country and being a bitch for the banking bastards: a fat personal bank account and an 'in' with the "in" crowd who deal drugs and enslave people/children.

What a crap shoot? The table is fixed and the decks are stacked with world bankers dirty fake monopoly monies.

Rome is gonna fall - it's only a matter of time before the U.S. economy is collapsed. History is repeating herself, as history has not been recorded in its truth and the lies are still covering the lies which are coverning the lies.

The truth is coming to light. That's one good thing to hold onto while the global economies collapse. The U.S. economy is being bankrupted. What ends will this means satisfy? U.N occupation of American soil and martial law on the North American continent???

P.S. That Uncle Tom escape goat Ollie North black woman by Bush's side is a witch, if I ever saw one.

There was no ground war in the first invasion of Iraq back in 1993. I'm suspecting Iran might be another "carpet bombing" project for Amerika's current administration. Kinda' like the way Amerika dropped napalm all over Vietnam. And people wonder why they still hate us(Amerikans).

__________________
So pardon me while I burst into flames.
I\'ve had enough of the world and it\'s people\'s mindless games.
So pardon me while I burn, and rise above the flame. Pardon me, pardon me, I\'ll never be the same. -Brandon Boyd
:roll: To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.int: :evil: :-...

I agree hope and Bushy-boy will state that the war has been won while the troops are still sent in to die. They will inevitably have to send in the ground forces and NO ONE stands a chance against the Iranians on their home turf, this I firmly believe. They are a united nation, unlike Iraq.

These folks will fight to the death for what they believe in, unlike us laisser-faire sheeple who don't believe in anything except money and ergo debt.